Retreading old ground

[zelempa]

sara_merry99 posted an interesting question recently. We're all familiar with the tired old "why slash?" but she asked about the experience of women who, once they go over to slash, lose their interest in het to the point where it's icky. I totally identify with that experience (dude, het is so icky! hee hee!)

Still, it's difficult to answer without getting into "why slash?" and a lot of the commenters did go there, including me. I can't really focus on anything without creating a bulleted list, and as long as I'm thinking about it, here goes.

The Tired Old "Why Slash?": The Complete* List of Reasons M/M Slash Fans Say We Love M/M Slash
* Not complete.

Reasons to like same-sex pairings in fiction

• Het romance is played out. We see het romance everywhere! Movies, TV, mainstream culture... Been there, done that. Gay romance is new! It is interesting!
  

  Problem: You'd think we'd also get bored with slash after awhile, then, but I personally will read Sheppard and McKay's first time over and over and over.
  
  

• Het romance has an uncomfortable implied power imbalance (and/or gender roles). Two people of the same sex are equals. I feel this one. I had actually identified this as my problem with being with men, so it's not surprising I should find this to be a problem in fiction about women and men. And the het pairings/tension I find most appealing are the ones where there's an equal balance of power, e.g. Mulder and Scully.
  

  Problem: Many slash pairings have an implied power imbalance, and it's not like slash writers as a whole sweep that under the rug. If this were the main reason to like slash, we couldn't enjoy a story where Blair gets dominated by Jim and/or cries his little eyes out, is all I'm saying.
  
  

• Same-sex romance is forbidden and taboo and therefore sexy. Most of the fandoms I like, anyway, involve the military, the police force, or some other highly rigid male-dominated subculture in which homosexuality would be a real problem. In the fiction, we frequently explore not only the implications of dealing with the outside pressure, but with the fascinating psychological issues relating to the characters' own feelings about their sexual and gender identity and insider/outsider status.
  

  This is the first item on this list so far which explains why m/m might be more popular than f/f (as it's generally less socially accepted.) And this explains why het pairings with an insurmountable obstacle, such as the piemaker and the girl who was dead, sometimes seem to appeal in almost the same way that slash pairings do.
  

  Problem: It's just not the same, though, is it? And I am fully capable of enjoying established relationship fics and AUs in which DADT has been repealed! and there is no problem!, where the taboo nature of the relationship is not the central angst of the fic. Similarly, I have no particular interest in non-gay-related psychological issues relating to identity and insider/outsider status. (Except maybe being a Sentinel?)
  
  

• (For the gays) It's us! It's us!!! For once.
  

  Problem: I think most slash writers are heterosexual women in real life, no?
  
  

• It's about friendship! At least in fiction, men and women are sort of expected to instantly see each other as potential mates unless there's a good reason not to, whereas men and men (or women and women) are not. So there's time for respect and love to develop before, and independently of, physical attraction. This is more unusual and interesting than the boring old dating cycle, and it arguably allows for a stronger and more loving relationship down the line. This also explains why het pairings where the friendship comes first (I CANNOT THINK OF ANY HELP) are similarly exciting.
  

  Problem: I totally groove on this dynamic (and dude, not just in fiction), but again, het situations which should be just as satisfying for this reason are just not the same. I don't know why. Besides, I've been known to like stories where the main guys are just gay and totally into each other from day one, or where they have to have sex for some reason other than love (aliens made them do it?), or where they are not friends at all and in fact hate each other (Mulder! Krycek!)

Reasons to like same-sex pairings in fan fiction*
* Reasons to like fan fiction in the first place are another can of worms altogether.

• It's subverting the text! If you see sexual tension between characters of opposite sexes, chances are it was put there on purpose. If you see it between same-sex characters, it's either unintentional (and you're subverting the writers' intent) or it's sneaked by under the radar (and you and the writers are subverting the producers, PTB, etc.) There's a delightful sort of mischief in that. (This explains why I lost interest in Xena and Gabrielle when the tension, if not the relationship, became a textual running gag.)
  

  Problem: Doesn't account for relative lack of popularity (or at least my own lack of interest in) other subversive, taboo elements, e.g. incest (with the exception of Wincest which is GAY ANYWAY.) There's also a number of fans who write and read in canonically gay texts, like Queer as Folk, and my own experience is that I like canonically gay stories of adventure (Nightrunner books) the same way that I like slash fiction.

Reasons to like m/m pairings, specifically

• One man is sexy. Two men? Sexier! Why waste our time describing women, whom we have no sexual interest in, when we could describe two men, each of whom we have a separate but equal sexual interest in?
  

  Problem: Okay, so, see, there are a number of lesbians into slash. And tons of bisexuals. Women are also sexy, right? I mean, I think so! But I still don't want to write or read about them.
  
  

• Let's put manly men in the traditionally feminine role of being objectified! We are accustomed to seeing women objectified, seen through the male gaze or whatever. Well, here's a way of objectifying the guys! See how THEY like the male gaze.
  

  Problem: Would not the female gaze work just as well? (e.g. a het story from a woman's POV.)
  
  

• Let's put manly men in positions of vulnerability! In society and in fiction, men--specifically these men, the characters we're writing about--are in control. Putting them in the socially-taboo tradionally-feminine role of liking another man, makes them vulnerable! Interesting interactions with societal constructions of masculinity ahoy! This also explains why we beat them up, impregnate them, and make them into women.
  

  Problem: M/m romance is not essential to vulnerability, and it's not a simple matter of the more vulnerable (feminized?) the better. I personally prefer stories where the characters' "masculinity" (not that I buy into it and sensitive guys can be manly etc etc) is left more or less intact. Also, mpreg and genderbending are (a) common squicks, disliked by a number of fans and (b) like intense hurt, arguably often used mainly as a device to help along the gay romance.
  
  

• It's a form of escapism: m/m relationships and sex acts don't resemble our own (assuming we're women), and it's something we'll never experience. Why waste our valuable fiction-experiencing time reading about some guy fondling a girl's breasts when we could read about what it's like to be blown?
  

  Problem: Most slash writers are women, right? So we're not reading actual accounts of what it's like for a man to experience an m/m relationship or m/m sex; the writers themselves are necessarily describing it in terms of things they themselves have experienced (eg. women projecting their feelings dating men onto men dating men; their feelings being penetrated onto men being penetrated). Also, don't a lot of the actual acts we write and read about (going on dates, giving blowjobs, etc.) resemble things we could theoretically experience? Also, given the aforementioned lesbians, even being in a gay relationship isn't a foreign experience for the readers. Also, if it's just about escapism, wouldn't identifying with a man who's in love with a woman, or with woman who's just really different from you, work just as well?
  
  

• Women who have less than stellar associations with RL sex might prefer to get their rocks off by reading about sex in which they do not imagine themselves in the place of the participants. I don't know how to support this argument.
  

  Problem: First of all there's the obvious problem that, as far as I can tell, slash fandom is made up (at least in the proportions of women in the general population) of women who have totally fine sex lives. I mean, from what personal posts I read, most of the women on my flist are happily married. (And that's leaving aside the small but prettily petted contingent of male slashers.)
  

  Less obvious but equally worrying is the assumption that a woman reading about a female character will instantly identify with her and put herself in the character's place, and that she won't do this with a male character. For my part, I would venture that I'm more likely to identify with a male character (although that could be because I'm, you know, used to reading slash, where most stories are written with a very close POV on one man.)

Reasons to like m/m pairings in fan fiction, specifically

• Men are the more interesting characters in the texts that we slash. A line that I keep quoting although I don't remember where I heard is that slash is feminizing texts for and by men. It's true that some of the most productive fandoms begin with extremely male-oriented TV shows--sci-fi, action, cop shows, etc. In these texts, the women are either ignored or drawn badly, so if we want to explore the relationships here, it's men and men and men all the way.
  

  Problem: Why do we choose to go to the trouble to feminize masculine texts? Feminine texts do exist--or, at the very least, texts less aggressively masculine than SPACESHIPS EXPLOSIONS OMG! I mean, I like SPACESHIPS EXPLOSIONS OMG!, myself, in and of themselves, and I'm sure lots of other girls do, too. But it doesn't explain why we feminize spaceship texts preferentially, or exclusively.

Really, none of the explanations I've heard, surmised by people in or out of fandom, totally work for me. I mean, they all seem like side-benefits, varying from fan to fan, rather than any core, unifying reason. And yet, for all the infinite variation in slashfandom, there is a strange sort of unity. (Isn't there?) I guess when it comes down to it, it's just a sexual/emotional kink like any other, defying any real explanation.

Comments

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

I'm absolutely with you on that; it's one reason why, given a choice between a variety of options for subplots, I like to offer some representation of people who don't get that very often. (Although sometimes the plot has other ideas. I was all happy about having a happily married-with-children lesbian couple in the graphic novel I'm writing right now -- lesbians of color, too! -- except that the plot is evolving in a direction which is putting them in imminent danger of being written out, unless I can find a new subplot for them.)